Feature Spotlight ~ SINGLE PLAYER by Elia Winters

Matthew Abrams finally has the life he’s always wanted—a promising career as a programmer at PI Games, a decent apartment in a nice neighborhood, and a thriving social life. And he’s perfectly content until he has a one-night stand with Silas Benson, a biomedical engineer with a charitable side to boot. Suddenly Matthew is doubting his life choices and worrying he might not be living up to his full potential.

Silas Benson doesn’t have time for much else outside of work, and that’s how he’s always liked it. As a biomedical engineer, he’s at the cutting edge of advances in the field, and he’s not going to waste his life partying when he could be doing actual good in the world. After a one-night stand at his friend’s twenty-fifth birthday party, though, Silas feels his focus shifting toward a certain tall, dark, and handsome almost-stranger.

When an emotional breakdown requires Silas to take a leave of absence from work, Matthew rushes to his aid and teaches him the merits of frivolity. Silas is an unwilling student at first, but Matthew soon has him in the groove, which makes for one steamy, wild ride. But is this a forever sort of affair, or will Silas abandon Matthew’s wanton ways in favor of a life of serious-minded solitude?

Silas eyed the wall of games. “I haven’t played any of these.”

Matthew let out a long exhale. “Well, whatever you want, really.” He got up off the couch and stretched. “You’re not tired yet?”

Silas looked at the clock. It was almost midnight, but he felt wide awake and more alive than in quite some time. “Not even a little bit. Why, are you tired?” He didn’t want to keep Matthew up.

“Nope, I’m a night owl, generally.” He strolled over to the row of games and picked out another cartridge. “Here we go. Mortal Kombat. And we’re going to play the Sega Genesis version, because the Nintendo version took out all the blood.” He took the gray controllers away and returned with two black ones, also wireless, but with smoother edges that fit nicely in Silas’s hand.

“I like these controllers.” Silas rubbed his hands over them. “They’re easier to hold.”

Matthew snorted. “Yeah, Nintendo took longer to catch on to that than Sega did. Most people were either Nintendo or Sega, no crossing over, but I like everything.” He gestured at the wall. “As you can see from the collection.”

Silas could count several hundred games just in the first two shelves. “So you play all these?”

“Not anymore, no, but I collect them.” Matthew turned the system on and the game started to load. “You know, craigslist, eBay, garage sales, whatever. I love modern games, but you can’t beat old school sometimes.” The dark red title screen appeared, gold letters in an archaic 1980s font spelling “mortal kombat” across the large flat-screen television.

Silas got the hang of it soon enough, after Matthew’s character killed his character in a few horrifying ways.

“Did you just rip off my head?” He looked at Matthew, incredulous, while Matthew laughed.

“Yep. Better get on it, or I’m going to do it again.”

Silas narrowed his eyes and turned back to the screen. He managed to win the next game, then the next. In the pause between games, Matthew set his controller down and gave Silas a devilish grin. “So, are you a betting man, Silas?”

Silas had a sense of where this was going. “Not usually,” he said truthfully, “but I could be persuaded. What do you have in mind? Strip gaming?”

Matthew frowned. “You figured that out too fast. I was going to flirt my way into asking.”

Silas smiled. “You’re not that hard to read, Matthew. Even for me.” On impulse, he reached out and tugged at the collar of Matthew’s T-shirt. “You don’t have to lose a bunch of games to get naked in front of me, you know. You can just take off your clothes.”

Matthew smirked, raising one eyebrow. “Oh yeah? That’s how you want to be?”

“Yeah, that’s how I want to be.” Silas leaned over and kissed a surprised Matthew on the lips. He was feeling loose and flirtatious and successful, even though his success was due to something as silly as gaming, but he wanted to ride that good feeling as far as it would go. Right now, it was going directly toward sex, and he was fine with that, too.

Matthew kissed back, openmouthed and filthy, and they almost didn’t get back to gaming because Silas was about to pull him down onto the couch and ask for more. But Matthew eventually broke the kiss, sooner than Silas was ready, and dragged his tongue over his upper lip in a way that lit up all the nerve endings down Silas’s body. “Get ready to lose, pretty boy,” Matthew said, his voice low and dangerous.

Silas did, in fact, lose the first game, and his shirt in the process. The next game he won, and Matthew took his shirt off as well, slowly pulling it up and over his head, then tossed it aside. Silas was pretty sure he didn’t need to play any more rounds of this game, and wanted to get into the bedroom right now.

“You know, this is a pretty brutal game to use as foreplay.” Silas looked over at Matthew. “Isn’t there a game with flowers or unicorns or something?”

“I’m sure there is, but the brutality is supposed to trigger our caveman impulses.” He started a new game. “Come on. I want to see those pants come off, next.”

They were evenly matched on Mortal Kombat, which meant a steady progress of clothing loss for both of them. Finally, they were both down to their underwear, and Silas was feeling giddy with the combination of gaming and sexual tension. It was like being buzzed.

“Okay, last game.” Matthew looked over at him. “You ready?”

Silas nodded, making his face into a serious expression. “I’ve put my game face on.”

Matthew just grinned in reply. “Yeah, I see that. Come on, Game Face.”

Silas lost, his character pummeled into nothing by Matthew’s character in what he still thought was the least sexy foreplay game ever, but that all dissolved when Matthew tossed the controller aside and turned to face him with a devious look. Knowing what he expected, Silas hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers, but Matthew held up a hand.

“Nuh-uh. Stand up. In front of me.” Matthew tapped the floor in front of him with one bare foot.

Silas got up and moved in front of Matthew, feeling ridiculous as he did so, the blush creeping up his entire body.

Matthew didn’t look at him with disdain, though, eyeing him like he was the most delicious thing he’d ever seen. Matthew beckoned Silas a bit closer, then put his hands on Silas’s hips and began to slide his boxers down.

Elia Winters has always been a New England girl. Although she spent much of her childhood in Florida, she returned to her home state of Massachusetts as a teenager and has remained in New England ever since. She was blessed with an artsy, creative, somewhat quirky family that nurtured her eccentricities and helped shape her into the sassy woman she is today.

Elia holds a degree in English Literature and teaches at a small rural high school where she runs too many extracurricular activities. She balances her love of the outdoors with a bottomless well of geekiness; in her spare time, she is equally likely to be found skiing, camping, playing tabletop games, or watching Doctor Who.

A writer all her life, Elia likes to dabble in many genres, but erotic romance has been one of her favorites since she first began sneaking her mother’s romance novels. In high school, she kept her friends entertained with a steady stream of naughty stories and somehow never got caught passing them around. Now, she combines her kinkster identity with her nerdiness to write geeky, kinky romance. Her first novel, Purely Professional, was a 2015 RITA finalist for Best Erotic Romance and Best First Book.

Elia currently lives in New England with her loving husband, their cat, and a tame mourning dove.